GTD is different than other approaches to personal and professional development in some fundamental ways. Join David Allen, creator of the methodology, in conversation with Todd Brown and Robert Peake. Click to play this episode Subscribe to the...

I have a confession to make. I have been routinely engaging in conflict-resolution sessions with a group of creative, talented mid-career professionals. We have been collaborating on solutions to complicated, high-stakes problems by drawing on the unique strengths and...

We’re deep into the season of office parties, mulled wine and mince pies here in London, and as the nights continue to draw in I find myself in a reflective mood. Around this time of year, I like to remind myself of the core ideas behind GTD®, by way of reaffirming my...

In this podcast, Todd Brown and Robert Peake are joined by GTD creator David Allen to discuss how the methodology can unleash creativity–even if you don’t identify as a “creative person”. Click to play this episode Subscribe to the...

In this special podcast, GTD creator David Allen joins Todd Brown and Robert Peake to discuss how GTD supports wellbeing both in and outside the workplace. Click to play this episode Subscribe to the...

Being often in a hurry, millennials love to abbreviate. One of my favourites is “tl;dr” (too long; didn’t read). In case you’re a millennial reading this now, here’s the “tl;dr” version of this article: if you’re afraid...

Scott Walker (not his real name) is a good friend of mine. He has nine black belts. Note, they are not in Judo or some other martial art. They have been acquired as a result of arriving at a hotel, looking for a belt for his trousers, and realising that it was still...

In ‘The Land of the Rising Sun’ during the 1990s, the madogiwazoku – which is Japanese for ‘the window tribe’ – were ageing employees who were no longer seen as useful to the organisation. However, since there was a reluctance in Japan’s corporate culture...

“There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labour of thinking” – Sir Joshua Reynolds Doing a bit of a spring clean this week, I came across a book I bought back in the early days of the web called “Don’t make me think”. It was written by...

This week we catch up with Andrew J. Mason: husband, father and host of the Getting Things Done podcast. He’s also presenter of The ProGuide Podcast and a narrator on Audible.com, and enjoys running, editing video, and helping others craft their communications....

Over the years in my blogs I’ve naturally quoted a lot from David Allen, the author of Getting Things Done. David has an astonishing ability to encapsulate powerful ideas in pithy sayings that stick with you.* But one of my hobbies is also collecting quotes from...

Christmas is a time for sitting around and pondering. So when my wife, Denise, asked if we should all go trampolining on Boxing day I should have said: “That sounds like an interesting idea, let me think about it ’till Easter”. Instead, I said:...

That’s what was on my mind on a beautiful summer’s evening in southern California in 2010. I was just getting started as a GTD trainer, and had travelled to the headquarters of the David Allen Company to work with some of the people there. David Allen had...

Like much of Europe, I’m off on my summer holiday. Unlike much of Europe, I’ve had a an e-mail arrive with a question about how to handle e-mail while on holiday. What to do? The sender did a seminar a year or so ago, and since then has been working at implementing as...

“You work too hard to be successful.“ Tom had been having a quick look at his e-mail under the table of the sidewalk café, but this last sentence from across the table jolted him back to reality. He considered himself a moderately successful individual, so he was a...

“Your ability to generate power is directly proportional to your ability to relax.” -David Allen One of the hallmarks of true productivity is a sense of fulfilment. In a recent article, I looked at the difference between performance as in professional...

For the inveterate movie hound that I am, the streaming of movies over the internet seems a huge leap forward for our civilization. No more clicking through several hundred channels of an evening to find a speck of gold in a mountain of televisual dross; now I can tap...

OK, so you’ve adopted some GTD best practices at the office. Maybe you have a core organizational system set up on your work computer, and it serves you well when you’re at your desk. You can capture, clarify and organize the inputs in the office, whether they’re...

When – in desperation – I first skimmed the book Getting Things Done back in 2004, I had a number of epiphanies. One of them was that there were people who were regularly able to empty out their e-mail inboxes. This information, in and of itself, re-defined the game I...

One of the clients I worked with recently had quickly understood GTD as a concept and wanted to do it, but was struggling with actually doing it consistently. He finally cracked the problem when he clarified why he wanted GTD, and what it would get him if he...

Ever had an overwhelming sense that the world is coming at you so fast that you can’t keep up? The emails and instant messages are arriving faster than they’re being dealt with. The stacks of paper on your desk are growing, not shrinking. When you see the boss headed...

I’m no doctor, but here is something I’ve learned from experience: when a muscle goes into spasm and doesn’t recover properly, sometimes it gets to a point where it has been tight for so long that the brain simply stops registering the pain signals it is sending. It...

You have a safety net. Whatever acrobatic manoeuvres will be required in the working week ahead, you can leap from platform to swinging trapeze with confidence. Someone down there is going to catch you if you fall. That someone, strangely enough, is you. As I...

We’re offering a new intermediate-level GTD seminar these days, Projects and Priorities, and I’ve run several of them over the last couple of months. It’s a day for expansive thinking; about building on the basics of GTD that enable us to stay in control of our...